Random musings...

[Cabs88]

Last night was a great start to the season and long may the team perform on the field, but just a few points to ponder..

Last night was a great night out, on a lovely night. Rather than hit out at the people that stayed away, instead I would like to pose the question, why werent they encouraged to attend.

Apart from the signposts around town, the promotion for the game was abysmal to say the least. New supporters are not being encouraged to attend, and this is a problem.

Time was players would go to schools, young lads (and girls) would see players coming from Longford Town, would identify with them, get a free pass or two and as soon as you can say xbox 360 they were nagging their parents to go out to Mullolagher (because thats how long ago it seems to have been)

How much would it have cost to market the game in schools throughout the week. A player or two to come out, talk to the class, and hand out a few free passes? How much would it have cost to have gotten a face painter out their for half an hour last night to meet the children? Surely every effort needs to be made to encourage supporters to go out and see for themselves what the rest of us enjoyed last night, and more importantly keep them coming. Having went from watching the United Wolves match to Flancare, there was no comparison in the excitement on show (and i'm not talking about Scholes' winner)

Simple things like ball boys and girls at a match will even encourage 10-20 new people out, and if they spend on average 10-15e thats nearly a tenth of our weekly playing budget..
Half time games.. Penalty shoot outs.. it all gets people involved, enjoying their night and wanting to come back..

The usual arguments will come up, thats its not a child minding facility, if your so mad about it why dont you do something about it etc etc but they are just excuses that are always thrown and nothing is done by the people who should be doing them jobs that their title suggests..

Discuss
:ball:

Oh and the scoreboard. Can we get that fixed??

[De Town]

Would agree with that tbh.

I have a point I would like to raise also. My dad's friend has just recently moved back to Longford to raise his family after living and working in Dublin for the last 10 years or so. He was always fairly on and off at attending matches in the past. Last night he decided to come out and bring his 4 year old son along. Now the little lad had absolutely no interest in watching the match at all, but he was still charged a fiver for bringing him in. This is completely wrong and is not going to encourage him to go out again if he's going to be charged to bring the little lad in. Under 8's or 10's should all be allowed in for free in my opinion.

[RonnieB]

While I wasn't there last night and will struggle tomake a lot of the home games this year due to changing circumstances I will say this; you could put a 100ft billboard in the centre of longford and the people still wouldn't come.

When the day comes when we are pushing for promotion you can be sure they will be back in all their glory....

[Cabs88]

yes but who's to say if that 100ft billboard was placed in the centre of town, and translated to polish, slovakian, or the many other languages that are commonplace in town nowadays things might change? The Billboards and signs arent attracting crowds to games as it stands, so why not translate them and try something different. Yes we will have people jumping on the bandwagon when times are good, but my point is why not get people to go out that havn't experienced the league of ireland before, why not target young people who are new to the town, that may not be aware of Longford Town and the football team, these are the people that should be marketed in the aforementioned ways.


On a side note hope to see you out flansiro way soon ronnie..

[Macy]

I have a point I would like to raise also. My dad's friend has just recently moved back to Longford to raise his family after living and working in Dublin for the last 10 years or so. He was always fairly on and off at attending matches in the past. Last night he decided to come out and bring his 4 year old son along. Now the little lad had absolutely no interest in watching the match at all, but he was still charged a fiver for bringing him in. This is completely wrong and is not going to encourage him to go out again if he's going to be charged to bring the little lad in. Under 8's or 10's should all be allowed in for free in my opinion.
Most things like swimming pools it's actually under 3's free, everyone else half price, so it doesn't seem to bad to me. My understanding is that when the kids go free promotions were done in the past, children were dropped at the gate and collected afterwards, with no money for the club and a lot of potential insurance problems. Even "when accompanied with an adult" has it's own problems with people not taking responsibility once they are in the ground.

[De Town]

Most things like swimming pools it's actually under 3's free, everyone else half price, so it doesn't seem to bad to me. My understanding is that when the kids go free promotions were done in the past, children were dropped at the gate and collected afterwards, with no money for the club and a lot of potential insurance problems. Even "when accompanied with an adult" has it's own problems with people not taking responsibility once they are in the ground.

I understand that, but this little lad was about 3 or 4 and had no interest in watching the match. Charging a fiver to bring him in was a bit steep imo, and certainly didn't encourage the adult to come back regularly in the future.

[sorbothegreek]

We will be doing a promotion during the build up to the Shel's game where one adult and up to 2 kids can get in to the game for €10.
It will be based on a voucher system where you present the voucher at the gate and the 3 of you go in for a tenner. The voucher system will hopefully tell us if the promotion has had any impact as we can see how many were presented at the gate.
I have 2,000 of these printed and i'm trying to get them out to shops/pubs/workplaces over the next couple of days. We'll also be handing them out in the shopping center from Saturday morning. If anyone would like to lend a hand please PM me with your e-mail address and i'll send you on the vouchers and you can print them off and drop them in places that i might not get round to.
I look forward to hearing from you...

[Ash]

My understanding is that when the kids go free promotions were done in the past,
children were dropped at the gate and collected afterwards, with no money for the club and a lot of potential
insurance problems.

We had exact same problem in Mels with the kids for free promo ... car would pull up at the game and a load
of kids pushed through the turnstyles. People treated it as a free babysitting service ..